Transition Day via Dingle Peninsula

Saturdays never seem to be a good day to be driving in the UK or Ireland, largely because of the number of people who come into the city.  There are the local residents who come from rural communities to market which brings more auto and foot traffic to the narrow village streets.  Today would be an especially long day of driving, a mix of needing to get to where we’re next staying and taking in some of the sights along the way.

Dingle Peninsula and the Slea Head Drive are said to be some of the most scenic in all of Ireland.  We did not have the extra three and a half hours to do the full Slea Head Drive, but we did drive as far as the point to get a bit of the flavor for the area.

 

Dingle Peninsula starts just outside of Tralee so it was very convenient as we started our morning.  Tralee was already bustling with people at 10am, but once to the other side of the city, we had a leisurely drive without much in the way of other cars until we arrive to the town of Dingle about an hour later.

The drive was through mostly sheep and cattle farms on expansive stone walled pastures.  As much as I wanted to stop for photos of the sheep with their spring lambs, it was really a challenge.   It wasn’t until later in the day that I would really have an opportunity to get out and snap some shots.

Dingle is a town right on the waterfront and seemingly caters largely to tourists.  I’m sure the folks living in this area also come into town for their weekly shopping needs but as we drove through, I couldn’t help but to feel most of the people were not from the area.  (Their driving is one good clue about this!)

Leaving Dingle, we headed northwest to the Slea Head Drive.   It was amazing to me how the land changed from largely grassy fields to that of stone and craggy rocks seemingly unfit for any living creature!  There were numerous turnout points, as much for the views as to allow for vehicles to pass one another on the often narrow one lane road.

At one point, we pulled over so that I could take some photos of this lovely stream that ran right over the roadway.  Within minutes, a huge motor coach tour bus came lumbering up the hill to this hairpin curve.  David had our rental car tucked in the corner of the curve, which apparently was the bus’ swing point necessary to make the sharp left turn.  Within minutes it became malfunction-junction with us, the bus, a small 12 passenger van filled with tourists and a cyclist!  As the bus drive maneuvered his turn, the cyclist popped through heading downhill as the bus went up. 

I think we passed 20 to 25 cyclists during the Dingle Peninsula & Slea Head part of our drive.  I couldn’t help but to think that these brave souls were really taking their own lives into their hands with the narrow roads and tourists driving on the opposite side of the road.

After the Slea Drive, we continued along the northern and more scenic route on the Dingle Peninsula heading over the mountains there was a nice vista with parking lot that allowed for viewing on either side of the mountain; Dingle Harbor to the left and Tralee off in the distance to the right.  On the Dingle side of the parking lot it was chilly and breezy . . . the Tralee side colder gale force winds made it next to impossible to hold the camera still enough to get a decent photo!  It was amazing just how just 20 or 30 meters made such a difference.

Continuing along back towards Tralee, I was lamenting about not getting many decent photo opportunities with sheep and was hoping for an experience like we had in Scotland a few years back when we turned a curve and there were sheep all over, in the road.  Not two minutes later, there was a ewe and her two lambs walking in the middle of the narrow two lane road.  As we approached she led them over to the side of the road.  David was able to pull the car over into a driveway to allow me to get out and snap a few photos including this with one of the young nursing.

Not too much longer we came upon signage for the Kilcummin Strand, so we took the side trip down a narrow road.  It didn’t stay “road” long as soon we were traversing a very rough and rocky path that brought us right to the shore.  There we watched the waves of Brandon Bay splash on the sandy beach.  We even baja’ed with the rental car!

When we left there, we were back on our way to County Galway and our next lodging destination in Recess.  This is probably as good a point as any to discuss the use of our Garmin GPS.  In anticipation of this trip last fall, we went ahead and bit the bullet and bought a Garmin Nuvi 1450LTM from Amazon.com for around $160.  Given that renting a unit through Thrifty Car Rental would be roughly $200 for our 15 days, a purchased unit was in our best interest.

We took it to the Florida Keys in November and I used it extensively on my recent Montana trip.  It was easy to learn and very helpful in navigating unknown areas.  Although at first, it had difficulty in getting us out of our own neighborhood in the most efficient manner, we’ve learned to adjust and communicate with “her”.  Geesh just want we need, another complex relationship to deal with.

So far on this trip, having the Garmin has been about 80% useful and we’ve been glad to have it.  The other 20% however, has presented some challenges including our arrival day when it apparently avoided the M50 toll road in favor of taking us through Dublin City.  We have now given “her” a name . . . TOOTS.  After all, with David’s mom in the car with us, we can’t really call her what we’d like too when she’s really taken us a drift from our intended route or destination.

During our drive on Saturday from County Kerry to County Galway, I had frankly expected Toots to route us through Limerick as all of the maps indicate that being the most direct routing from Tralee.  Imagine our surprise when Toots blurts out “Continue 1.5 kilometers and board ferry.”

We immediately had to stop and look at our OSI Ireland Atlas just to see where Toots had brought us.  The ferry from County Kerry (Tarbert) to County Clare (Killmer) would be a 20 minute ride, saving us some amount of time and petrol.  More importantly as this point in our day, it saved David having to drive through yet another busy city on a Saturday afternoon.  The fare was €18 for autos plus passengers.

The ferry was actually an interesting experience with all sorts of passengers using it to cross the River Shannon.  Offloading from County Clare were mostly autos, but there was a couple of fuel tankers, a large lorry and even a tractor hauling a trailer.  On our trip over to County Clare, the most interesting passengers were a woman with her two well behaved dogs and an RV that was apparently from Germany (based on the license plates on the vehicle and the left-hand driving steering wheel).

I snapped this photo of the Clare Abbey as we entered the M18 motorway near Ennis.  It was a drive-by snap taken with my Canon600SD pocket camera.  I’ve been pretty happy with most of the photos I’ve been able to take from the moving vehicle.  Sometimes they are too blurred because something in the foreground enters the frame, but given the very limited availability of turnout spots to stop to frame a photo where you want to the “drive-by” method of photography will have to suffice.

We arrived in Oughterard which is the last little village before reaching our timeshare cottage in Recess, where we had dinner at Breathnach’s Bar, a quaint local’s pub that served meals from morning (breakfast) to night (lunch and dinner).    Ellie had been looking forward to Irish Stew and her she was able to fulfill that wish.  I had the fish & chips, while David had the beef lasagna.  Everyone enjoyed their dinners and with full tummies, we head across the market square to the grocery store to buy our provisions for the week.

By the time we reached our cottage, nightfall was approaching.  We dodged a pair of sheep trotting up the lane towards our evening’s destination.  Being an old rustic style cottage, the place inside was unbearably cold and took more than two hours to warm up . . . but that is for another (blog) time.

p.s.  Sorry for the formatting but I'm at a pub and all of a sudden my connection's gone spotty.  Until next time . . .